Stuck in Reverse
by Mint-Chocolate-Leaves
Summary: "Sometimes," I said, "It seems to me that a normal parent might not take such pleasure in making fun of me as you do." "Oh Remus! If parents do not openly laugh at their child, they are not, in fact, their parents. How else would the child learn to avoid doing those things that would elicit laughter from strangers? The mockery of parents is affectionate," First!Year


_©Mint-Chocolate-Leaves 9th August 2012_

* * *

_Chapter One_

My name is Remus Lupin, though in this day and age, where pure bloods and wealth are the altars at which society worships, I cannot see a reason as to why you should care who I am or that I exist.

I am not a pure blood, nor am I the child of a pure blood. I am not related to a pure blood - to be blatantly honest I am certain I have not spoken to, met or given a kidney to a pure blood, (why would I anyway? Why not use magic?) Furthermore, I have no fantasy to become a pure blood.

In fact, I am so much of a non-entity by the standards of the wizarding world, that 'the daily prophet' will probably not only never do an article about me, but the editors will probably laugh at the idea of someone sending in a story about myself.

I am eleven years old - still classed as a child through the eyes of every adult I have met, but far to mature to be classed as anything other than 'strange' by any of the other children I have met.

Consequently, a demographics expert might conclude that my soul audience to interact with is other eleven year olds like me who are categorized as 'strange' as well.

In truth, I cannot ever think of anything to say to this narrow audience. In my fair share of experience, I find that I simply do not care about most of the things that other eleven year old children care about. Except survival of course, though mine is a different kind to any other child's...

I lead a peculiar life.

By this I don't mean my life is better than yours – in fact I'm positive yours is better than mine. I'm sure that your life is filled with as much happiness, charm, secrets and everlasting terror as anyone could withstand.

After all, like me, you are at least some sort of human, and we all know how much of a joy and terror that is.

I mean only that my life is unusual. Strange things happen to me due to the lunar cycle that doesn't happen to most people typically. If ever.

For example, I would have never set out to write this memoir if I had not been commanded to do so by a two-hundred pound man with the ability to hex me, with silent spells into next week.

His name is Ross Lupin, though I call him dad, because that is his relation to me.

Dad has become dependent on the use of magic. He loves being able to use the mahogany wand that he owns to get out of charms and to heal himself when he falls down the stairs. In fact, if all the world were to run out of magic overnight, I am afraid that St. Mungo's would not be able to help my father's heart restart from the loss.

Personally, I do not have great affection for the wizarding world, because, for one thing, I am looked down on by every wizard with disdain due to my illness.

The reason for the prejudice looks on wizards face every time they hear about someone like me, seems credible - but I am not fully convinced that my condition is as bad as they make it out to be. -ish.

Besides, I simply cannot fully trust societies who turn their backs on people with a small difference in their genetics. Although many people believe that anyone with the same condition as I are dangerous, I persist in believing their beliefs are a load of lies.

For reasons that will soon become clear, this manuscript cannot be published during my lifetime, any struggles through life will not be repaid with millions while I'm still alive and breathing. Dad suggests that I should leave my riches to the growing economy of the wizarding world, which, according to him, is worth every last Knut.

I will choose another charity. One that has never made me out to be a monster.

Anyway I'm not writing this to become well known throughout the country. I am writing this to save my sanity, and to make sure that everyone like me knows that there will always be hope for people with a condition that affects their life drastically.

This story starts on a Thursday, which to you might mean another day of school or work, but to me, means another day of reading endless books once again.

Books are this wonderful escape for me because I can just open a book and disappear into it, and this is the only way out of the house for me. It's been like that ever since I was a small child.

When I started writing this, I had no idea how in fact to start out doing so, and so my mother suggested that I be an unreliable author, like in the muggle book written by Agatha Christie.

In this book, the narrator starts off as a nice guy, but at the end of the book, you find out he is a murderer.

I have not murdered anyone, in fact the only thing that will be unreliable about me are the facts that I transform into a wolf every twenty eight days, and that I use long words that as an eleven year old I shouldn't know what they mean. Don't worry, you'll find out soon enough.

On this particular Thursday I was hopeless, no faith in my life and I know now that I should always have even a small amount of hope in the cracks of my soul. Because when we don't allow ourselves to hoe, we don't allow ourselves to have purpose. Without purpose, without meaning, life is dark. We've no light within, and we're just living to die.

To start off with that was me, the boy living to die.

Once upon a moon, it had not been my life's ambition to become one of the deceased, but due to the situation of my futures dreams being ripped from my chest at the age of four, I had re-considered my desires and intentions…

I assure you, this will not be written like a gothic-horror novel, I have been told by my father that it must be kept light and that if it continues going down the depressing route, I will be hexed into the oblivion. Sometimes, my father scares me, though I know that his threats are incomplete.

"Son, if you do not keep the tone light," He told me, "Then you will be the newest addition to my 'hexed into the oblivion' wall."

I doubt that this is true, seeing as my father doesn't even have a 'hexed into the oblivion' wall at work OR at home.

I'm getting ahead of myself; I don't talk to my father until the owl attacks our laundry...

* * *

My name, Remus, is an odd name, but I did not know it was 'unique' until I was seven years old, and by that time I had grown to like the strange, eccentric name.

When I ask my mother why I was named Remus, she tells me that she named me after my Romanian uncle, though she refuses to dwell further into the conversation.

My father remains adamant to the fact that I do not have a Romanian uncle, and that instead he and my mother had actually meant to call me Remus. Though he stops there, not giving me an inch more detail on the topic.

My mother insists that I have a Romanian uncle, and tells me that he is married to her sister, Lucia.

My father then tells me that although Lucia is my aunt, she has never married because she is a freak of nature, and she has probably never met a Romanian called Remus because it is not a common name.

My mother disagrees profoundly and this is usually the part where I leave my parents be and go read whatever book I have been reading that day.

* * *

Back to the matter at hand, it was as normal a Thursday as ever, (May thirteenth 1971) and I was recovering from the full moon that had occurred three days previously.

I should probably add that I am a werewolf at this point of time, just so that I can make my point clear. At this moment in time, on the Thursday where I start my memoir, I had been a werewolf for seven years, two months and three days. I was bitten on March tenth, 1964, in case you did not want to do the math.

At precisely Seven O'clock, my internal alarm clock went off, bringing me from my consciousness, and back to the reality of my life. I am not positive what I had been dreaming of, however I remain certain that it included a cup of tea, and several lengths of rope.

Slowly I lifted myself up sitting in a pike position, as pain tickled at my ribs and collar bone, laughing at me in spite and malevolence. Using my lycanthrope senses, I closed my eyes, allowing my hearing and sense of smell to determine what was happening around the house.

My father, as per usual wasn't home, he was at work – in the book store he worked at Diagon Alley, but my mother was downstairs in the kitchen. I knew not only that she was in the kitchen, but that she was cooking breakfast for herself, and for me, when I proceeded to make my way down to her.

Today she seemed to be cooking a fry up, I could hear the sizzling of the bacon on the muggle grill, the popping of the eggs against sunflower oil, and the microwave droning on as it cooked plum tomatoes.

Since my Mother was a muggle-born, she was used to cooking the muggle way, instead of using magic. This means that in order to cook good food, she actually requires skill, which unlike my father, she possesses.

Within seconds, I had opened my eyes again, allowing myself to spring up to my feet. I ignored the groan of protest I received from my body, as I rushed down the stairs, with a graceful pose that I had only ever read about in books. That is what bacon does to a boy.

"Good morning Remy!" My mother called when I entered the kitchen with a smile on my face, through my eyes, my parents were the best people in the world. "Dance with me!"

I hadn't realized that her muggle radio was switched on earlier, blurting out songs like 'How to mend a broken heart' and 'It's too late'.

My mother, Lena Lupin, smiled at me, with her ocean blue eyes glistening with as much happiness as a house wife can possess – a lot. She immediately took both of my hands in her own, and dragged me around in circles, her feet barely touching the ground before she made her next step.

Soon both my mother and I were laughing, singing tunelessly to the song, as we kept spinning around the kitchen.

Finally however, the songs ended, and they were replaced with the news, to which mum rolled her eyes out of boredom. After several seconds, she finally dished up our cooked breakfasts, placing them on the table in front of us.

"Thanks Ma," I said, as I took a bite into my eggs, watching the yolk make its way down to my bacon.

"No problem Remy-kin's," She replied, as she cut up her bacon into pieces, "I hope that this is better than YOUR cooking, because for a fact that was terrible."

The week before this Thursday, my mother, being the mother she is, ordered me to try and be her for a day, while she had to take my role as a child. This included me having to try and cook all of our meals for the day… the end product was… prominent. My mother and I both promised to keep our own roles in the family for the rest of our lives after that day – I the son and she the mother. After all it wasn't convivial to wear an apron… it was completely horrendous.

"Sometimes," I said, "It seems to me that a normal parent might not take such pleasure in making fun of me as you do."

"Oh Remus! If parents do not openly laugh at their child, they are not, in fact, their parents. How else would the child learn to avoid doing those things that would elicit laughter from strangers? The mockery of parents is affectionate, and it teaches the child against foolishness. It's all for you!"

My mother smile knowingly at me, and after a moment of attempting to come up with a reply, I shrugged.

"Fair play, you win, this time."

After breakfast, my mother went out to the market, to buy the groceries, leaving me with the mundane task of cleaning the dishes. I'd finished within minutes, and so I started reading 'Hogwarts: A history.'

Within seconds, I heard a tapping sound at the window, and as I looked up from my book. Outside the kitchen window, was a tawny brown barn owl, with a letter attached to its leg.

It was no more than ten seconds before I took that letter off its leg, giving it a treat before it flew away back to where it had come.

Looking down at the letter, I felt shivers run down my spine.

_Remus Lupin_

_The back room_

_17 Kendall Avenue_

_Alum Bay_

_Isle of Wight_

With eyes full of doubt and trembling hands I quickly shook my head, I knew that this letter was sent from Hogwarts, the crest had been stamped onto the back of the envelop.

Due to the fact that I knew I was going to be rejected out front, and that I already knew what was going to heartbroken when if I opened and read the note.

So I did the only logical thing that came to my mind at the second, within seconds I shredded the letter up into several tiny pieces, before letting them become engulfed in the flames by the fire place. As I watched the letter burn, I unconsciously let out a small animalistic whimper, as I blinked back tears.

As a werewolf I had learnt two things:

1. You've got to stay sharp, on your toes, alert. Always look over your shoulder. Always protect yourself. Don't let your guard down for even a second. There are people who will take advantage of you the moment they see you're not in control. The world's filled with people like that you see. Nearly every one you meet is like that. You can't trust hardly anyone, hardly anyone at all. Even people who are supposed to like you can turn on you faster than you think. Even friends. People who say they love you are the worst, the most dangerous, the most untrustworthy of all, (Except mum and dad, I can trust them.) People who say they love you will pounce when they get the chance. You have to always remember that they are just waiting for the opportunity to get you. This letter was a trick. A cover. A way to catch me off guard.

2. Never let down your guard. Never.

* * *

When my mother returned from the supermarket, I returned back to my room, as I tried to tell myself over and over again that I wouldn't ever become a wizard, and that I had to let go of the dream.

Inside, I hoped that I wouldn't ever get a letter like that again, because inside I knew I wouldn't be able to deal with the pain again, even though I hadn't even looked in the letter yet. I couldn't allow myself to gather hope to just… lose it all. To allow that hope to shatter into even smaller pieces than they already were...

"You're a werewolf Remus," I told myself, "Even if you were allowed to go, you'd be putting everyone in danger…"

* * *

A/N: So what do you think? I hope you all liked it, and Reviews will be appreciated, I will probably continue with this, but I can't promise that It'll be quick like a tomorrow thing, because I'm moving house on Saturday! I hope you like the chapter! Take care!


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